By losing, the Justice Department will attract only more criticism about its decision to prosecute Clemens — a decision that had already drawn rebuke as wasteful and unlikely to prevail. When coupled with the Justice Department losing on the three perjury counts in the Barry Bonds trial in April 2011 (Bonds was convicted on one count of obstruction of justice and sentenced to house arrest), the government’s steroids-related cases against arguably the best hitter and best pitcher in baseball over the past 30 years can only be viewed as failures. Do not expect any more perjury charges of baseball players.

Nothing that happened in Washington, D.C., on Monday will change the view of Roger Clemens. The majority of baseball fans will continue to believe he lied to Congress when he said he didn’t use steroids. The verdict in his trial was never about the truth.

Rather, it was about a case that never should have seen a federal courthouse once, let alone the two times it did. And yet justice department lawyers pushed on and on for weeks, but all they ended up proving was they couldn’t take the obsession of a few spotlight-seeking politicians and turn it into a conviction.